Elon Musk's Mars Colonization Plan Now Includes Intercity Rocket Travel
Click:bearing manufacturer Elon Musk still wants to colonize Mars—and he's willing to sacrifice SpaceX's existing fleet of spacecraft to do it. Musk revised his plan to transport people to the red planet today in Adelaide, at the International Astronautical Congress, nine years to the day since SpaceX's first successful rocket launch. At the center of…
While You Were Offline: The Internet Can't Keep Up With the White House (Again)
For those feeling as though the current political reality in the US is starting to look like hyperactive fiction, last week provided a lot of fodder for the notion that everything is speeding toward some kind of season finale. First, there was the news from intelligence agencies that voting systems in seven states were actually…
This Robot Snake Means You No Harm, Really
If you’ve never had a robot snake constrict around your leg, let me tell you, it’s a weird feeling. As it curls its way up your ankle, then shin, then finally wraps around your knee, it gets tighter and tighter. Fortunately, unlike a real snake, it doesn’t have teeth. Unfortunately, also unlike a real snake,…
Oral History: How Marvel’s Creative Head Helped Bring Nintendo to America
Today videogames are a multibillion-dollar industry, as much a part of popular culture as movies or music. But in 1983 the console gaming industry looked like it was headed for a kill screen. Atari, Intellivision, and ColecoVision had run the market into the ground, and home computers were poised to be the next thing to…
Women and Minorities in Tech, By the Numbers
If you feel like you keep reading about diversity in tech, well, that’s because there is still not enough … diversity in tech. The juggernauts of the first computing revolution like HP and IBM actually had reasonable gender diversity, and IBM had its first female VP back in 1943. But fast forward to 2014 and…
How Climate Change Fueled Hurricane Harvey
Hurricane Harvey has already dumped 9 trillion gallons of water on Texas and may leave even more before it backs up to the Gulf of Mexico. Starting as a category 4 hurricane as it made landfall on Friday night, Harvey, which has since been downgraded to a tropical storm, is breaking weather records every hour—and…
While You Were Offline: The Final Days of Paul Ryan
If the first week of April felt a little (comparatively speaking) light on political melodrama, last week made up for it, and how. Whether it was a Republican former congressman being found guilty of 23 felonies, the National Enquirer apparently buying a rumor about President Trump to bury it or the president considering rejoining the…
MIT Wizards Invent Tech That Sees Around Corners
Robots can pull off a lot of righteous tricks. Hopping on one leg with ease, for instance. Or teaching themselves to play children’s games. Or even rolling through one of San Francisco’s most chaotic neighborhoods to deliver you falafel. One thing they definitely can’t do, though: see around corners. But they just might soon. Because…
Scientists Found the Neurons That Respond to Uptalk
Too often, letters, words, and sentences get the credit for conveying information. But the human brain also makes meaning out of pitch. Like how upspeak turns any sentence into a question? Or how emphasizing the beginning of a sentence (Tom and Leila bought a boat) helps clarify that it was in fact Tom and Leila…
The Secret History of the Racy Module That Almost Ruined D&D
An epic Dungeons & Dragons campaign, any player will tell you, can take many hours. It’s not just a few rolls of the dice. Yet there is one D&D quest that’s more difficult than even the most fiendish homebrew game run by the most sadistic dungeon master: Finding an original copy of the module known…